we understand much of that comes from medicare, things that we've heard from republicans over and over like raising the eligibility age, means testing, things like that. so then we have about $600 billion in essentially spending cuts, half from mandatory spending, half from discretionary spending. this is the other very interesting thing that's new. $200 billion from revising the consumer price index. that sounds very technical. but it has very real world consequences because it very much could affect the money, the checks that social security recipients in particular get every single month because it effectively changes inflation so it changes the formula from what they would get. >> significant differences between the white house proposal on this part of the equation as well as on the tax equation. the politics behind this latest republican counterproposal, are they just going through the motions of having their opening bargaining positions knowing that both sides are going to have to make concessions. >> reporter: the answer to that is yes. everybody knows that everybody is going to